UN Throws A Hissy Fit After Texas Threatens To Arrest Their Election Observers… Update to this story. Via The Hill: Texas authorities have threatened to arrest international election observers, prompting a furious response from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). “The threat of criminal sanctions against [international] observers is unacceptable,” Janez Lenarčič, the Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), said in a statement. “The United States, like all countries in the OSCE, has an obligation to invite ODIHR observers to observe its elections.” Lawmakers from the group of 56 European and Central Asian nations have been observing U.S. elections since 2002, without incident. Their presence has become a flashpoint this year, however, as Republicans accuse Democrats of voter fraud while Democrats counter that GOP-inspired voter ID laws aim to disenfranchise minority voters. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott further fueled the controversy on Tuesday when he sent a letter to the OSCE warning the organization that its representatives “are not authorized by Texas law to enter a polling place” and that it “may be a criminal offense for OSCE’s representatives to maintain a presence within 100 feet of a polling place’s entrance.” The letter goes on to accuse the group of having met with liberal organizations that oppose Voter ID laws. The OSCE put out an interim report last week saying that “recent state-level legislative initiatives to limit early voting and introduce stricter voter identification have become highly polarized.”
Obama Admin Warns Texas Not To Arrest UN Election Observers… Nobody messes with the UN on Obama’s watch. Via Beltway Confidential: International election observers planning to visit Texas polling places have “full immunity” from being arrested in the United States, the State Department said when discussing a letter from the Texas Attorney General. “I’m not going to get into any kind of hypothetical situations or predict where this is going to go other than to say we have every expectation that this will be worked out and to state the fact, which is that under U.S. law they are eligible for immunities,” said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland. Reporters tried to get her to state explicitly that Texas could not arrest election observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), but Nuland would only reiterate that OSCE observers have full immunity. Attorney General Greg Abbott, R-Texas, warned OSCE that it “may be a criminal offense for OSCE’s representatives to maintain a presence within 100 feet of a polling place’s entrance,” as The Hill noted.